The Massena plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
75° on Nov. 12, 2012, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 70° in 1982.
Massena’s center stands about 220 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 170 ft to 300 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Marble Hill, about 450 ft, 10 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Beekmantown Group (in part) (dolostone, limestone), from the Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Massena reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of the Grass and the Saint Lawrence: about 14 river miles. The St. Lawrence carries it on to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Massena; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Massena has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. About 34 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Massena normally reaches 45° and falls to 28°. The record high is 69°, in 1959; the record low 8°, in 1971. The most rain on this date, 1.12 in, fell in 1975.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Massena International Airport, 2 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
